environments: What strategies do they adopt to
optimize foraging and fitness? Might only a minority of cells stumble upon the right combination of nutrient patches and survive, i.e., is the
mean motile bacterium a dead bacterium? How
are gene expression and uptake kinetics tuned to
the intermittency of nutrient encounters? How do
episodic events, such as blooms and spills, and
top-down controls, such as predation and viral
lysis, play into the competition and succession
between oligotrophs and copiotrophs? If new approaches to quantify the metabolism and behavior
of marine bacteria at the level of single cells can
be brought to bear onto these questions and if the
resulting insights can be integrated into comprehensive ecological frameworks, we will achieve a
deeper understanding of the functions of bacteria
in the oceans and, ultimately, improve our ability
to predict the dynamics of Earth’s biosphere.